RENT begins!

As closing night is upon us for Night of the Living Dead, my immediate attention now turns to RENT.

Originally, I was only scheduled to light RENT, but unforeseen circumstances have also put the set into my hands. While this suddenly has become a much bigger job, I also have a chance to again drive the visual quality for the show!  

For the past week, I have been scrambling to familiarize myself with the show.  I have seen it once when the tour came through St Louis shortly after it was on Broadway in the late-1990's.  I spent that evening in the top row of the balcony at the Fox Theater with my ex-wife's two teenage nieces and their boyfriends.  So, I didn't really absorb much of the show and remember very little about it.  Of course, the music is imprinted on my brain, having been the pop music of my theater crowd for years and repeated incessantly by Seth Rudetsky on Sirrus radio. 



OK, so I know that the story takes place in the East Village in the 90's.  I have been to NYC many times and have walked those streets. Although the area has evolved over the past 15 years, I have a general sense of place... graffiti art, not gang tagging, but real art...iron fire escapes, old brick facades...little shops on the ground floor of +- 10-storey old brick buildings that once housed manufacturing and warehousing.  I know the neighborhood...

Scott wrote a whole chapter on RENT for one of his books, which he forwarded to me so that I could begin to understand his perspective on the show. I also secured a copy of the coffee table book about the show, at first because it includes a copy of the libretto. But once I started reading it, I couldn't put it down. The whole first half was an assembly of quotes and comments by the collaborators, director, staff and performers.  They combined to tell the story that  Jonathan Larson was not here to deliver first hand.  

I was particularly drawn to the comments by Paul Clay, the scenic designer.  It helps me to get a handle on the show understanding why he did what he did when he developed the original production at New York Theatre Workshop  and then adapted it for the Nederlander Theatre .

I started collecting photographs of the East Village and have shared a few of the more colorful here. I can see where Paul Clay got the inspiration for the junk sculpture that he included in his design.

RENT not only takes place on the streets and in the storefronts, but also in a shabby loft apartment, rented by Roger and Mark.  I started pulling images of downtown loft apartments.  Of course, the Internet is not filled with pictures of shabby lofts, but nicely re-done lofts that rent for more than I make per month! But the bones of the spaces are still there even with their modern furniture.

  The first thing that I observed was that the inside and outside of these places were actually very much alike...exposed brick, large industrial windows and iron stairs in the lofts were nearly the same as on the outside of the buildings. It is almost as though the buildings are just turned inside out and used for interiors. 

So, now I have a pallet of images and a general sense of what I need to to do to create the image of the East Village.  

The components that I must have include:

1. Some kind of iron platform and stair, but maybe rusted instead of new and black.
2. A couple of large windows with milky panes that can change color depending on the location and action in the scene.
3. A rusty, industrial door in a section of brick wall that is painted with graffiti
4. AND Scott requested a large raked disc down center stage, painted like a full moon... to be used for a variety of purposes in the blocking and choreography.

All of these images and ideas are currently rolling around in my head. This weekend, as we strike NOTLD and I once again have a bare stage, I will take more accurate measurements of the area that I have to work with. When I did NOTLD, my base drawing was not the scale that I thought it was and the set was a little small. I had to do some serious jockeying as we loaded in to get it in the right place. 

Next week, I will begin composing ideas on to the bare, black canvas... 

Until next week, you still have two more chances to see Night of the Living Dead!!!!
See you at the theater! Rob